Etymology of "copacetic"

[Stephen Goranson]

Copasetic has been discussed before on this list. Copasetic is the earliest known spelling, but the Oxford English Dictionary uses the spelling Copacetic for its entry. Despite extensive searching no published use has been reported (here, at least) earlier than 1919. I have suggested that Irving Batchellor made the word up for his 1919 book, A Man for the Ages: A Story of the Builders of Democracy, about Abraham Lincoln. The same book includes what appears to be another neologism or newly-made-up word, coralapus.
My 27 Aug 2007 post:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0708D&L=ADS-L&P=R7634&I=-3&d=No+Match%3BMatch%3BMatches
and following posts discussed this further.

The ads-l archives can be searched here:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?S1=ads-l

Stephen Goranson
http://people.duke.edu/~goranson/
________________________________________
From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] on behalf of Meng Lu [lumeng at GMAIL.COM]
Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2014 4:14 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: [ADS-L] Etymology of "copacetic"

Hi All,

I recently come across the word "copacetic".  English is my second
language.  OED does not seem to have much information.  Does anyone know
anything about the origin of the word?

Meng

PS. The oed.com entry looks like:


Pronunciation:  /kÉ™Ê pəˈsÉ›tɪk/ /-ˈsiːtɪk/
Forms:  Also copesetic, etc., kopacetic.
Etymology:  Origin unknown.
U.S. slang.
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  Fine, excellent, going just right.

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